How the Teahadist Party ate the GOP

Subscription Required

Thank you for reading the MtDemocrat.com digital edition. In order to continue reading this story please choose one of the following options.

Current Subscribers
If you are a current subscriber and wish to obtain access to MtDemocrat.com, please select the
Subscriber Verification option below. If you already have a login, please select "Login" at the
lower right corner of this box.

Special Introductory Offer
For a short time we will be offering a discount to those who call us in order to obtain access to
MtDemocrat.com and start your print subscription. Our customer support team will be standing by
Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm to assist you.

Call and Save! (530) 344-5000

If you are not a current subscriber and wish not to take advantage of our special introductory
offer, please select the $12 monthly option below to obtain access to MtDemocrat.com and start
your online subscription

If anyone needed more proof that the Teahadist/GOP Party is undemocratic, then the government shutdown ought to convince even the most skeptical. The bomb throwers preferred destroying the government and the world economy than accept the will of the majority.

The Teahadists do not like the constitutional process by which each chamber passes legislation. Where, in the Constitution, do they read that losing an election, or having to submit to a law they do not like, sanctions bypassing the constitutional order and blackmailing the president?

Although no Republican voted for the ACA, it garnered a majority of Democratic and Independent votes in both chambers after going through eight months of negotiations. It wasn’t “rammed” down the GOP’s throat, nor was it passed during a lame-duck session, as the GOP also claims — it was passed on March 23, 2010, long before the November elections.

The GOP never offered an alternative to the ACA, nor did it offer “fixes,” nor does it intend to ever do so. If the Republicans want to pass a law repealing the ACA, then follow the procedures outlined in the Constitution: propose a bill and get a majority of the votes. Is this “democracy” business such a difficult concept for Republicans to grasp?

“There is nothing wrong with our present health care system that the free market cannot fix,” recently declared a Fox pundit. No kidding. She brought to mind the lady I met a month ago. She and her husband have 9-year-old autistic twins and, naturally, have been unable to get health insurance. They’ve had to declare bankruptcy twice. How do Teahadists tell such families to suck it up and wait for the “free market” to fix things? Too often, the wait turns into a wake.

The House of Representatives circus to which the world was just treated courtesy of the Teahadists speaks for itself: The inmates are running the asylum. Our own Tom McClintock is an opportunistic Teahadist extraordinaire, a man who never met a social program he did not want to kill or a polluter he did not embrace. McClintock calls himself a “Republican;” pity the party of Lincoln.

The Teahadist Party is an extremist group that has more in common with Europe’s nascent neo-fascist parties than with the GOP of Lincoln or Eisenhower. The disruption of political meetings, carrying guns to intimidate the opposition, their refusal to accept elections and to obey laws they do not like and the demonization of opponents are chillingly reminiscent of the tactics routinely used in all fascist states — from Mussolini to Guatemala’s caudillos. The vilification of Clinton and the attempted coup d’etat to unseat him are right out of the fascist playbook. And now, the same bunch is applying similar tactics to President Obama: bilious lies and invective tinged with a lot of racism that can only come from people who live in a world filled with hate and are detached from reality — people living in a bubble impervious to facts — people like McClintock.

The Teahadist Party will go the way of its ideological twin, the Knownothings whose extremism carried the seeds of its own destruction.